BfK 10 – 14 Middle/Secondary continued


is Joe’s resilience, his touching determination to be grown-up about things. He’s no whinger, and though the reader will blame his mum from page 1, Joe doesn’t; she’s the only mum he’s got and if it weren’t for Dean, things would be okay. There’s Joe’s growing friendship with Asha to enjoy – first love, really – since it’s tender yet unsentimental; and Asha (who has parent troubles of her own) is so witty, optimistic and resourceful. She thinks Joe’s good at seeing her too and she’s not afraid to tell him so.


You wouldn’t expect a fairy tale ending. When Mum finally makes it back from Spain, she’s maybe begun to sort out what really matters, and it helps that the law catches up with Dean and he’s locked up for ten years or so. Joe’s still very self-aware, but he’s grown tougher and knows he’s not the freak he thought he was. Narrow horizons, small cast, tight focus; and so Joanna Nadin ensures we care about Joe finding Asha and Otis, and his mum, and even himself.


GF Pike HHHHH


Anthony McGowan, Barrington Stoke Teen, 126pp, 978-1-78112-486-6, £6.99


hard on pikes for Nicky, who tells this story, to describe them as ‘evil’ when all they are doing is angling for their next meal. Anthony McGowan’s Brock, his last story about these two brothers, was long-listed for the Carnegie Medal. This one deserves to be too.


NT


We Are All Made of Molecules


HHHH


Susin Nielsen, Andersen Press, 336pp, 978-1-78344-232-4, £12.99 hbk


The setting is conventional and contemporary: Vancouver, with what’s left of a couple of damaged families coming together to forge a new one. Within that framework, though, we’re offered a sitcom of a novel, with the exaggeration of character, dialogue and events which is the staple of the genre. As so often in teenlit, there are alternating narrators and the comedy is embedded in their differing voices. The partial perspectives of Stewart and Ashley leave the reader in a slightly removed position, well aware of their limited reading of characters and situations. That perspective is the source of much of the pleasure this novel will surely provide.


This story is an object lesson in the art of compression. In only 128 pages it touches on natural history, sibling relationships, living with mental disability, split families, fear of outsiders, dealing with bullies and coping with guilt. There is also an exciting adventure quest which stays credible by eschewing any silly improbabilities. The pair of brothers in the thick of all this describe themselves so well in their dialogue there is no need to add anything else. Best of all, the ‘dyslexia friendly’ vocabulary employed, as always in Barrington Stoke books, is embodied in good, clear prose which is a model for any sort of writing for young readers. One or two descriptions of imaginary violence feel out of place in such an otherwise warm and affectionate story. It also seems a bit


13-year-old Stewart is the first to admit he is a Genius, especially in maths. Two or three years after his mum died of cancer, his dad is moving in with Caroline, a colleague from work. The enforced move across the bay from Stewart’s old home in North Vancouver is one reason for leaving Little Genius Academy for the gifted; he’s also keen to attend the local High School, because Caroline’s daughter Ashley (just one year older) goes there, and he’s earnestly determined to bond with his new sister. Stewart is well aware his giftedness does not extend to social skills, but armed with the best of intentions and a 7-point TO DO list about getting involved in his new school (‘Try not to make those grunting sounds you’ve been told you make when you get bored or stressed’), he arrives with his cat Schrödinger at his new home to find it has five bathrooms (‘Every single human member of this household could go at the same time and there would still be a bathroom left over’). He’s ‘89.9 per cent happy’ with the new arrangements.


Ashley is like totally 110 per cent horrified. She’s not actually lost her dad; it’s worse than that. He’s come out and what’s more he’s living in a house at the bottom of the garden. What’s even more, he’s found a partner, Michael, though even in her despair, Ashley can’t help but notice Michael’s flawless dark skin and his faultless dress sense. All of this, if it gets out, will like totally wreck her status as the school’s top fashionista. And now there’s this ‘midget-egghead-freakazoid’ Stewart, who actually talks to her when she’s with her friends at school. This will do nothing for her burgeoning relationship with basketball star Jared, the hottest


28 Books for Keeps No.212 May 2015


guy around, recently arrived on campus, trailing clouds of mystery. ‘Rumour has it he was kicked out [from a private school], which makes him even more intriguing; according to this article I read in one of my magazines, women like a hint of mystery and possible danger in their men.’ Ashley’s narration is colourful, if uncertain. Her first chapter begins: ‘My family is FUBAR’ which unpacks as “Effed Up Beyond All Recognition”. She’s a High School Mrs Malaprop – her ‘constipated’ is everyone else’s ‘emancipated’; and on a good day, she’s full of joie de beaver.


As Stewart finally tells her, Ashley lives in magazine-land. She’s all about Appearances – from clothes to cars to girlfriends. As for boyfriends, her first concern is how they’ll look together in the wedding photographs, followed by the trophy children they might breed. The plot races through crises at home and school, where Stewart becomes the furry-suited bulldog mascot for the basketball squad. The crunch comes – as it rather frequently does in suburban teenlit – at a drunken adult-free party where everything goes wrong. Stewart only just thwarts Jared’s predatory web-posting of revealing pix of a wasted Ashley. Little by little, the narrators see beyond each other’s surfaces. As Ashley becomes less ‘gayist’, she and her dad get on much better. Stewart’s making progress too; Phoebe, a sane, perceptive girl from the Mathletes club, likes him for what he is. She even kisses him. And, ‘every now and then, Ashley and I have moments when we genuinely connect.’


GF Lost on Mars HHH


Paul Magrs, Firefly, 352pp, 978-1-91008-022-1, £7.99 pbk


Paul Magrs has some Doctor Who novelisations on his cv, and while, as far as I can see, he hasn’t been responsible for any of the recent TV scripts, readers of this account of life on Mars will find themselves in a very similar world of knowing literary reference and manipulation of audience expectations, in which nothing is as it seems. The tale begins with a Martian dust storm which engulfs a homestead of second or third generation pioneer earth settlers. The hopes for life on Mars of the first settlers have long ago disappeared and these homesteaders are grubbing a living on the Red Planet in exactly the way that homesteaders did in the Old West; except that their beasts of burden are large lizards and their robot servant is a customised sun-bed. At first I thought we might be in a Martian Grapes of Wrath but I should have realised that, since the narrator’s name is Lora, it’s Little House on the Prairie in space. But here it’s not Native Americans the family have to worry about, along with bad weather and crop failure. Lora and her family are driven from their home by the encroachment of ghost insect-like indigenous Martians who are ‘disappearing’ humans and according to a young Martian who befriends Lora, eating them; because, well,


times are hard for the Martians too and there’s a lot of meat on even a skinny human. After Grandma’s disappearance and Pa’s death, Lora sets off with the remains of her family and a motley group of townsfolk to find other humans on the planet, following the signals of broadcast weather forecasts whose mysterious incantations are reminiscent of our own shipping forecasts. Adventures and encounters with more strange creatures later, and separated from the rest of her party, Lora, her brother and the sun-bed find themselves in what appears to be a Victorian city. Yet, as I may have said, nothing is what it seems, and they are mysteriously reunited with Grandma and Pa. Disappointingly, for this reader at least, many of the questions that are raised during the novel’s 300+ pages, will have to remain unanswered until further on in the projected trilogy. In fact, this didn’t seem to me to be enough of a satisfying read in itself. It was more intriguing than exciting and rather too much of what intrigued me was left unresolved.


CB The Wordsmith HHH


Patricia Forde, Little Island, 286pp, 978-1-90819-599-9, £7.99 pbk


The world has suffered a great disaster and only those within Ark are safe. They are ruled by Jon Noa, who sees luxury and frippery as the reason for the world’s collapse. Everything should be restricted to what is necessary, and that includes words. Letta is an apprentice wordsmith, she and her master collect words and their meaning. The rest of Ark only use words from the List; there are only 500 soon to be reduced to 100.


Outside of Ark there are scavengers who live on what little waste there is and what they can find from the old days. There are also the Desecrators – outlaws who fight against Ark using music and art.


Letta is drawn into the conflict when one of the Desecrators arrives at her house hunted and wounded and she falls in love with him. She begins to learn her family’s history and the true nature of John Noa’s vision.


This is an exciting adventure set in a dystopian future and I am sure that any reader would be horrified at a world without words. Where the true tension comes is from the vision of a world without art and imagination and the frightening logic of how such a world can be arrived at from the best of intentions. A fascinating read. CD


The Territory HHH


Sarah Govett, Firefly, 208pp, 978-1-91008-018-4, £7.99, pbk


It’s 2059 and following the Great Floods half the world’s land is under water. Only the central part of Old Britain, the Territory, is fit for human habitation, and there’s just not enough room there. As the Ministry says, ‘limited space requires limited numbers’ so all children have to sit an


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